The galaxy is in flames. Horus, the Warmaster of the Imperium has turned against the The Master of Mankind and has led half of the Legions against Him. The Great Slaughter, the first expansion to Legions Imperialis is up for pre order today. Set during the assault on Beta Garmon, and the start of The Warmaster’s push towards Terra, the book not only provides narrative content about this conflict, but also new gaming content for games of Legions Imperialis such as campaigns, new detachments and units and even rules for 6000 point games of nothing but Knights and Titans! In this review we’ll be taking a look at the contents and seeing if this is worthy of a place on your bookcase.

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Without further ado, let’s dive into The Great Slaughter

Legions Imperialis The Great Slaughter Review

Legions Imperialis had a very unfortunate start with the original boxed set and first wave of miniatures delayed for a couple of months due to issues with the original printing. This, combined with the rapid release schedule in general led to the game finally being released in the last part of 2023, with the second wave of models and supplement being shifted into 2024. I suspect that the plan was for this book and the associated miniatures to come out at the end of last year. Thankfully however we have not had to wait too long, and now with The Great Slaughter we see the unit options available to us greatly expanded compared to what was in the core rulebook.

As mentioned in the intro, the setting is Beta Garmon and The Great Slaughter – and this is detailed in full over 67 pages of lore. Essentially, Horus requires to take Beta Garmon in order to launch his assault upon the Sol Sector – this is a critical route to send his fleet through, and so both Loyalists and Traitors know that this system could well seal the fate of the entire war. As such, massive resources are put into securing it from both sides, leading to the kind of massive battles that Legions Imperialis is suited for.

We also get a nice breakdown of all the forces that took part in the conflict, allowing players to theme their collections around the participants, and giving some flavour for narrative players who want to capture the “actual” forces that took part in the battles.

As ever, there’s lots of gorgerous artwork on show with both artwork and scheme drawings of vehicles like we have seen in other Specialist Games Studio books.

Legions Imperialis Campaigns

The first big gaming section of the book contains information on running campaigns consisting of linked games of Legions Imperialis. Now, this type of campaign is nothing new for many gamers, but this book contains full and detailed information and ideas for running something of this type. If you have played in any Necromunda campaigns then you will have a good idea of what to expect – essentially the campaign runs for a set number of “campaign cycles” and within each cycle each player is expected to play at least one game with an opponent – as such, at the end of each cycle you start to see the push back and forth across the Loyalist and Traitors (For maximum balance its best having an equal number of people in each allegiance) as they start to battle each other for Campaign Points which is essentially the victory tracker for the campaign. The book recommends an extra player acting as the Campaign Master, essentially performing the same duties as an Arbitrator in Necromunda. They manage the campaign, capture and share the results of battles (For added narrative flavour I always find this works best as a series of “news from the front” articles that can be shared with the players – this let’s you flex some creative muscles and is a little more interesting to read that a vanilla list of game results!) while also organising the games and keeping track of all the moving parts. While a player can do this job, it’s nice to have a neutral extra player running this side of things in case they want to throw in any curve balls to mix things up if one faction starts to run away with a large lead.

Battles in these campaigns are recommended to be played with 3000 point armies, but there’s another resource that is collected and spent over games called “Requisition Points” that allow players to bring an additional detachment on top of their 3k force. These requisition points cap at 300 points, but its a nice way of having a little “side board” of units that can be added to their force in order to help against a certain foe or to help in a certain scenario. It also means that if more units are released over the course of the campaign that you can take them with Requisition Points to try them out, even if they didnt exist in your original army list. This is a nice touch and adds some variation to the armies that you will see over the run of the campaign.

What’s really cool with this section is that they provide two different styles of campaign to use as a tool box for building your own. The first, Warfront, takes place on a hex map with players fighting over various strategic locations in order to gain access to a number of different boons and bonuses. For example, if you manage to take the location of a Titan Forge then your allied Titan detachments can be 40% of your points rather than 30%. This will again be familiar to Necromunda players, as campaigns there work in very much the same way.

The book has a number of different modular expansions that can be tacked onto the Warfront campaign in order to make them suited for you and your players. The approach here is great as you can go as simple or complex as you want, or perhaps start to introduce more of the more complex additions once your players have found the ropes. There’s things here such as having a 4000 campaign roster that you create and then draw your 3000 point armies from in each battle, or the winner of each game getting a one use “boon” that gives them an advantage in the next game. All of these additions are optional, but leave the campaign feeling fun and scalable.

The Warfront campaign has asymmetrical missions that are added in addition to the standard missions in the core book – these add some more interesting scenarios like ambushes or defending an entrenched location – they may not be as “balanced” as the core book ones, but instead offer interesting and engaging ways of telling a story over the course of the game and mixing things up with some different victory conditions compared to the more symmetrical setups.

The second campaign in the book is The Second Battle for Nyrcon City, and this essentially expands on the core Warfront campaign with more additions and gives it a narrative framework based around the battles in the lore section of the book. This includes another couple of new scenarios that simulate key moments from the “historic” battle, and the starting locations in the campaign are based around what areas both the loyalists and traitors held at the outbreak of the battle. This again is great and gives players a tool box to pick apart in order to create their own campaigns. As this is a pre written campaign with all the leg work done for you, it also acts as a great introduction for your gaming group to get into Legions Imperialis campaigns.

Titandeath

The next section of the book covers rules for Titandeath games. This is something a lot of people have shown a massive interest in, being able to play games using armies of titans with the Legions Imperialis ruleset. While Adeptus Titanicus allows you to play detailed titan battles with a maniple or two, Titandeath is designed for armies of 6000 points consisting of nothing smaller than a Knight, leading to some truly awesome looking armies with multiple engines per side. What this doesnt offer is a way of pitting an entire army of titans against a standard army, and to be honest if you really wanted to do this you could, though it might not be fun for the person with a normal army!

With this being a game mode all around titans blowing chunks out of each other, some of the core rules are amended a little to make things work a little easier. Firstly, weapons on Titans are resolved one after the other in an order chosen by the firer. This is so that you can use your shield stripping weapons first to try and get voids down and save your titan killers to fire last so that they can actually do some damage to the target. On a similar note however voids are more reliable, with them not reducing on a roll of 5+ when a level is depleted. Both of these rules capture the back and forth of engines unleashing salvos in an attempt to strip shields, as the target braces for impact and puts all power to shields,

Finally, Titans cannot split fire unless they are only shooting at Knights – this means that you can’t game things by stripping voids from multiple titans then using a single engine with multiple volcano cannons to try and take them all down in a single round of shooting.

I really like these updates as this makes titan only games of Legions Imperialis really appealing as an alternative to Adeptus Titanicus.

Another change in Titandeath missions is how objectives can be captured – we get a new chart for Tactical Strength for Titans, with a shift in these games you want your biggest and strongest titan on an objective to take them – Knights for example only have a tactical strength of 1 while Warmasters have a tactical strength of 5 – flooding an objective with multiple Knight bases is still an option, but they will struggle to seize an objective off a Warmaster and Warlord standing next to an objective.

To support the game mode we get a trio of brand new missions designed for Titan battles, and a collection of 6 Secondary Missions that are suited to this titan heavy game mode.

While the buy in for a Titandeath army is perhaps higher than a normal game of LI at 6000 points of Titans a side, this let’s you create the kind of scenes you see within the pages of books like Mortis, with an entire Titan force marching against their rivals. For me this really appeals as it takes what makes Adeptus Titanicus really cool, but strips out a lot of the admin and management for something a little easier (Don’t get me wrong, Titanicus is very cool and has it’s place, but Legions Imperialis is a little faster paced and easier for a casual gamer to pick up)

Finally the book closes with new formations and detachments for both the Legiones Astartes and the Solar Auxilia – now I really do think these should have been in the core army lists in the Legions Imperialis rulebook, and I suspect that each new LI supplement will expand these lists further with even more new units. This will potentially lead to a Necromunda style issue where you have to bring along a small library of books in order to play with your faction. Let’s face it – we’re probably going to get legion specific units and primarchs at some point, so I’m hoping that later on down the release cycle we see something more like a “Codex” for each force that collects together all the rules for an army in a single tome – though that is just wishlisting from me, and this may not be the case.

Legiones Astartes

Marines get new units in the form of Jetbikes, Outriders, Spartans, Land Speeders, Javelins, Land Raiders, Drop Pods, Dread Drop Pods and Deathstorm Drop Pods

On the Formation side of things we get a nice one that will allow players to take a lot of the new fast units (A lot of which are not even released alongside the book) in the Sky Hunter Phalanx formation, this has compulsory jet-bikes, speeders and javelins filling out the 4 required vanguard slots, with an additional optional vanguard slot, an air support slot and 2 light armour slots – all the jetbikes, speeders and javelins gain outflank, and the option slots here offer some flexibility to slot in some detachments you cant fit elsewhere.

Marines also get Drop Pod Assault Formation – this, as you can guess, has you take everything within it get Drop Pods or Dread Drop Pods as a dedicated transport – makeup is similar to the ones from the core book with a HQ, Support and 2 Core as required, and then an optional 2 Core, 2 Support and an Air Support – Basically lots of infantry and Dreadnoughts getting dropped into battle!

Spartans and Land Raiders look very good with a 2+ save allowing your units to get to where they need to be in one piece while boasting some decent anti tank weaponry (Though as you might suspect they are not cheap with Land Raiders at 40 points a pop and Spartans at 80)

Drop pods are nice and cheap, and each detachment with them can purchase an additional Palisade drop pod that sports a 5+ shield generator.

Solar Auxilia

The Solar Auxilia also get access to a number of new detachments in the form of Dracosan’s, Cyclops Batteries, Malcador Infernus, Valdor Squadrons, Stormhammers, Medusas and Basilisks

They also get 3 new Formations which as you would expect work really nicely with the new upcoming kits.

The Artillery Company needs a HQ and 3 Artillery slots, with 2 optional support and bastion slots, but gets a massive boon in that Earthshaker and Medusa cannons do not get a -1 to hit when shooting at something they cannot see. As a fan of artillery heavy armies this one appeals to me very much so!

The Mechanised formation also does what you would expect, allowing all infantry within it to buy Dracosans as a dedicated transport – I can see myself using this one to slot a lot of the units from the original release into, as it allows your large infantry detachments get to where they need to be with some decent protection. It requires a HQ, a Support and 2 Core, with 2 optional Vanguard, an optional Support and an optional Air Support.

Finally we get the Super-Heavy Company which requires 3 Heavy Armour with an additional 2 optional ones – this formation increases the tactical Strength of a model if it has another model from the formation nearby – allowing you to push onto objectives with your big tanks.

From a rules pov, the Dracoson is a decent transport with a 2+ save and an optional Demolisher Cannon for some decent short range AP-3 shooting to threaten things coming to crack open your tanks. The Infernus puts some template flame damage on big infantry blocks while the Valdor can crack open even heavily armoured targets with its shock pulse equipped Neutron Beam Laser. for covering the board with long ranged fire, the basilisk has a 90″ range barrage weapon, which becomes really good in the Artillery Company.

Summary

After a rocky start impacted with delays and stock issues, The Great Slaughter shows that Legions Imperialis is here to stay with some brilliant content for people who want to run campaigns or games with nothing but titans. People who have no interest in those game modes and only want access to the new unit rules may feel a little disappointed in having to buy another book to gain access to all those detachments rules, but personally I feel that the other game content in here is well worth picking the book up for.

I really hope that this is a sign that Legions Imperialis is going to get strong release support and we get even more tiny models to supplement our tiny Heresy forces.

The Great Slaughter is up for pre order today and is released on Saturday 2nd March.

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with a free copy for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

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